Deadly Six
From Sonic Retro
Reception section in the intro paragraph
I legitimately don't get why this is here, it doesn't cite any sources on the arguments and genuinely comes off just like someone's personal rant rather than an actual informative section. If there was a reception section citing opinions from reviewers of the game or something, fine, but as it is it comes off as someone trying to speak authoritatively on "fan opinions" without any real sourcing to back it up and comes off completely subjectively.
As I mentioned in an edit, Big and Elise (two of the most notoriously disliked characters in the series in the past) do not have sections like these are all, nor do any other characters who faced a lot of fan criticism in the past (Chip, Silver, Infinite, etc.). I'd also argue the sections for Chris and Cosmo are not warranted in their current state, either, as again, there are zero sources or anything to back this up and the wiki is asserting subjective claims from the nebulous source of "fan opinions" without citing anything. Not really an encyclopedic thing to do. BubbleRevolution (talk) 22:40, 19 December 2022 (EST)
- It's a by whom moment
- The lines should be referenced. If a reference can't be found, the lines should go. It's not an "unencyclopedic rant" - critical reception is notable, but it's a fair challenge to make.
- As to what that source looks like - you'd probably have to trawl through (p)reviews, and I suspect you're more likely to find indifference (though if you count the Sonic Retro forums as a measurement of opinion...)
- One vague plan I had for Reception page on Sega Retro was to have some prose to go alongside the raw statistics. e.g. "many reviewers thought the graphics sucked[1][2][3][4] but the music was widely prasied[5][6][7][8]". The reason that hasn't happened... is because it's a big job and my priorities lay elsewhere
- The wiki shouldn't itself be subjective, but it can document subjective opinions... if that makes sense. -Black Squirrel (talk) 08:45, 20 December 2022 (EST)
- That's pretty much my issue on the section itself, as I said in the post. As of right now it just comes off as a rant presented via a format of "neutrality" because it doesn't document any sources and just uses the nebulous claim of "fan opinions". If one can pull up examples of reviewers' opinions on the characters and cite those as evidence, that's definitely a fair thing to include, but as of right now, like you said, the biggest issue is there's nothing to attribute said opinions to on the page and doesn't set a great standard. For instance, I could add a section to Amy's page saying something like "Amy is widely disliked by fans of the series for her personality and overly obsessive infatuation with Sonic, with some describing her as 'annoying' and viewing her as an unnecessary addition to the cast." Regardless of whether or not that's an accurate assessment of a majority of fans' view of the character, if we use the same standard, what metric would we have to remove that bit? I've seen some people genuinely have that opinion, so it's not *false*, but again, we don't make a distinction of who has those opinions, hence my issue with the bit in question.
- The Wikipedia "List of Sonic characters" page has sections on Big and Silver that cite that they were massively disliked by critics, using multiple reviews as a source. I think if the section had anything like that, it would be fine to keep, but as in its current state it's not really something that should be kept here unless it gets massively rewritten and backed up with sources. BubbleRevolution (talk) 15:27, 20 December 2022 (EST)
- Reading these additional comments on the matter, I was wrong to revert the removals and realise that you are right in that I should have used citations for it, I do apologise for that. For now, I've decided that rather than removing the paragraph about their reception, I have commented it out so that reliable references can be found for it to justify being put back in, and also removed the protection from the page. Should it need further rewriting, feel free to do so. --BSonirachi (talk) 16:03, 20 December 2022 (EST)